


Fuck The Rich! (Wait, Literally?)

by bobaheadshark



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, An American in London, Colonial references (chapter 2), Copious Rose Tico, Dark Comedy?, Day drinking, Did I trojan horse a story about Rose's grief into this weird premise, Eventual Smut, Except the closet is Hux's library and it's really self-imposed, F/M, Gingerflower, Gingerrose - Freeform, Hux rents his house out for orgies just roll with it, I say swingers party but honestly it’s mostly cishet pairings, Neither Hux nor Rose participate in the orgy, Overall sex-positive, Paige is already dead, References to Paige's funeral and death, Rose Tico Needs A Hug, Shades of melancholy and angst, Trapped In A Closet, maybe so, most of this fic is just them talking and processing stuff, past finn/rose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:48:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29718126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobaheadshark/pseuds/bobaheadshark
Summary: “Nuhuh." Rose says. "Not going to a millennial swingers' party to find adate.”Narrator: PLOT TWIST, she does.----Or, Hux is a washed-up aristocrat who rents his house out for massive orgies for the money. He usually hides in the library with huge headphones when it all goes down, but Rose Tico - who’s there on a dare - stumbles in by accident.They talk. And thingsspiralslow-burn from there.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico, Paige Tico & Rose Tico, Reylo (Background), Stormpilot (Background)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 88





	1. Solitude is Bliss

**Author's Note:**

> A self-created [Twitter prompt](https://twitter.com/bobaheadshark/status/1287808511053725696) that has ballooned into whatever this is.
> 
> Thanks [Kay](https://twitter.com/drkldykay), [Kalx58](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalx58), and [Lepak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lepak/pseuds/Lepak) for their beta-ing on this. And to the Gingerrose hive for supporting my nonsense.
> 
> Rating will go up in later chapters 👀

* * *

The trip had germinated, of all places, at a taco joint in Soho. One of the ones that served a killer _Al Pastor_ variant, but much as Rose tried to smile it away, she could never banish the thought that they never quite hit the spot like the ones from home in SoCal. 

Not that she’d say anything about it, of course. Because Rose is many things, but she isn’t the friend who puts up a fight for the sake of being right. That’s Rey, to a T. And they work, because where Rey steamrolls through a problem, Rose bends. Like the time they negotiated their new lease on the place in Elephant & Castle, and Rose had to physically grab Rey to stop her from laying into the landlord about the leaky water heater. It’d just been easier to put in a quiet complaint to the small claims court at the end of the tenancy and be done with it. 

Because Rose is the type of woman who pep talks herself in the bathroom mirror, telling herself that she may be a prime participant in neo-capitalism, but is a new bottle of _Raddus Coral_ really that bad? Surely she deserves a little bit of self-love after a long life of putting her nose to the grindstone? 

_It’s what Paige used to say._ Her sister would lean over her shoulder and say to Rose in the mirror: “there’s no problem out there that can’t be solved with a positive attitude and some mean nail polish”. Dark hair like a halo around her face, smelling of lavender and engine oil, in the mirror of their one-bedroom in Merritt Heights, smile electric-bright.

The nurses had told Rose that Paige looked serene, even in death. Said it in a voice so low that they didn’t think Rose would hear. And later, after the tears and the condolences and the wake – so oddly solemn for her sister that she barely remembered any of it – Rose thought it was ironic. That a hospital named Providence would have never prepared her for this eventuality. 

_In Vietnam_ , Rose remembers, _the mourning period for immediate family is two years_. 

But that was then, and this is now. 

And if she had followed the advice of her therapist and the instagram affirmations that she kept in a secret file on her phone, she should really be in the “moving on” stage. 

She has gotten very good at plastering her expression with the nominal amount of joy to get by. 

And at hiding the fact that tacos make her think of home. 

Even if she’s not entirely sure where that is anymore.

“An _orgy_ in a _mansion_? That’s just pretentious.” Rey’s eyebrows are arched sky high, and she curls her arm into her boyfriend’s – Ben, in that comfortable way that couples do that would be annoying on anyone else. But because it’s Ben and Rey, Rose thinks, it’s just sweet. 

Ben looks mildly amused at the idea, emitting a low chuckle as Finn slams his palm on the table.

“What’s that shit they always used to say at First Order? No chickening out.”

“Let it be known that I never said yes to this.” Ben says, curling his oven mitt of a hand around Rey’s. Rey’s smile back is so radiant, Rose imagines it could power halogen lights on one of those old-timey trains.

They’re such an attractive couple that at least three tables turned to stare when they had walked in. Just the power of Rey and Ben together, really. Ben and Rey, the two-pack tetris set of shining intellect and intellectual brilliance. Like how planets get sucked into orbit, or Thanos-except-way-hotter-and-there’s-two-of-them, their gravitational pull is just that: inevitable. 

She’s still thinking about it as Finn and Poe continue talking a mile a minute, doing that thing they do – finishing each other’s sentences like it’s a competition. 

“I hear the owner’s this old-ass recluse who drives a golf cart around and never speaks to his waitstaff.” Finn says. 

Poe guffaws. “Dude, that’s Elon Musk. Fancy English manor owners don’t leave their private wing.”

Rose stops picking at the salt on her margarita for a second to gape at Poe. “There’s a public _and_ a private wing at this place?”

“Hell yeah! I hear it’s a Tudor monstrosity that they’ve subdivided into like, pleasure chambers or something and you just wander around it like a Big Boy’s Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory.” 

“Quite a choice of words, Poe!” Rey choruses back, through a mouthful of deep fried jalapenos. 

Poe shrugs as if to say _eh_. Finn reaches to whack him on the head. The entire table knows Poe won’t apologise for inflicting their brains with the cursed image, and the conversation barrels on.

“–think it’ll be fun,” Finn says.

“I think it’s going to be appalling,” Rey says, tossing back a tequila shot as Ben hands her a lime.

“‘S gonna be fucking HILARIOUS,” Poe says in a voice so loud that several people shoot him glares from across the restaurant. 

Rose laughs, a low _hahaha_ pitched just-so, at a frequency that telegraphs “I mean, that’s cool. I’m down for whatever you guys are.”

Because Rose is many things, and staying in her comfort zone was not on the list of affirmations for the year.

More food arrives, and all around Rose is the sound of a good Friday night and alcohol-soaked joy. Even the usually solemn Ben barely waits for the basket to hit the table before he’s snagged two pulled-beef tacos and fed one to Rey while he inhales his own food. 

_Ah, young love._ Rose thinks.

“And anyway,” Poe says, aggressively shaking red Cholula over his meal, “Think about it, Rose. You might even _meet_ someone there.” 

Rose channels her most deadpan expression at Poe. She aims for withering, and probably lands closer to unimpressed. In the background the Arctic Monkeys are wailing something about fake tales of San Francisco, which seems weirdly apt. 

“Even if it’s not _the_ one, at least you’ll have _someone_ ,” Finn adds, patting her arm. 

“Nuh _uh_ . Not going to a millennial swingers' party to find a _date_.” 

Poe wipes sauce off the corner of his mouth and jabs his thumb at Ben and Rey. “Ros, don’t you want even a little bit of what these two have?”

Rose pins Poe with a stare and Poe, the fucker, gives as good as he gets. His stare back is knowing, like he’s daring her to deny it. 

An unwelcome feeling flares in her gut, and it’s not only after she leaves the restaurant afterwards that she recognises it for what it is.

Jealousy.

But at the table surrounded by her four friends, it’s easier to play deflection. 

Because Rose is many things. And diverting attention? Blending in with the furniture? Wrapping her brown angora sweater around her like it’s camouflage? That’s her forte.

“Two bullheaded techies who spend way too much time at each other’s places overexerting themselves when they could be saving on rent? No thanks!” Rose declares.

Rey looks affronted, and gives Rose a playful punch on the arm. “Hey! Like you don’t reap the Fitness Club access and free food, Rosie.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. And I’ll put up with it but only ‘cus I love you, ‘kay, Niima?”

So the night goes on. And so the cursed field trip is.   
  


–-

  
On the train ride up, Rose makes a good show of not wringing her hands and smudging half her makeup in cold sweat. Poe and Finn have somehow turned the Guardian crossword into a one-upmanship of wordplay. Ben and Rey make increasingly shitty jokes on the journey about this “bougie millennials’ BDSM outing”, and then seem to have a silent conversation about…Rose thinks that actually, maybe it’s better not to know.

A kaleidoscope of English pastoral scenes passes Rose by: Window. Tree. Sheep. Cute cottagecore aesthetic house. Renewable electricity windmill. More sheep. And she finds herself trying to wrap her head around what exactly she’s agreed to. 

It isn’t that she’s antifeminist or not sex-positive, exactly. She voted for Obama in the last election and read Jezebel (when it was still good), and she knows about SWARM and informed consent and all of that. 

It’s more like, running around barely clothed in a house full of strangers seems like… _bad hygiene? Maybe it’ll be kinda cold? Bodies covered in sweaty leather just like, gyrating, like, won’t that be kinda... squeaky?_

Poe had just frowned and said “what?” and Finn passed her the Facebook invite to read the rules. 

The invite had been euphemistic. “Mulberry Society”, all tastefully designed light graphics and classy font. Not a clandestine kinda operation, because Rose had worked enough odd jobs in her past – freelance movie night posters for the local frat house from a shared library computer lab included – to know from the kern and graphic that this shit was expensive.

The invite was, she’d also admitted, intriguing. A regency-era man taking off one sock, and a woman with big old-timey curls looking over her shoulder. All demure Jane Austen if she’d woken up in 2016 and decided her life’s calling was, in fact, to work the gig economy and ride her fixie down Shoreditch High Street while working on her follow-up novel.

All of that, to disguise the fact that fifty people or whatever would be fucking themselves silly in this mansion-type deal. The hedonism of it all...

Rose felt like she might never look at berries the same way again.  
  


–-  
  


Now, Rose is surrounded by four walls and a creeping sense of embarrassment.

They’d arrived at the main house ten minutes ago. There had been an intro spiel by a very bored and surprisingly normally-dressed orgy warden who’d set the terms of engagement. _Discuss safewords before any activity, respect boundaries, consensual non-con was for those who had filled out appendix form 3A only, there was liberal lube and condoms around the vicinity, and if anybody was uncomfortable with the activities therein, kindly let the warden know._ The rest of the crowd numbered about fifty, which sets the social anxiety part of her brain off a little ( _am I supposed to say hi to all of them? They’re going to see me naked???_ ) but mostly it’s oddly reassuring that it’s such a motley crew of people, all kinds of shapes and sizes. 

Rose had peered around at the group she had come with – Poe and Finn looked surprisingly solemn, so she gave a grave nod, too. She’d thought of soldiers being sent off to a battlefield, and it took all her self-control not to make a bad banana pun.

Then, Ben and Rey had snuck off to the garden without another word.

“Nobody’s winning a Nobel prize for guessing where they’re going,” Poe said, failing to hide his smirk. They’d all seen the greenhouse on the way in.

“How long do you give them in there before they break something?” Poe continued. 

“An hour.” Finn replied.

“Ha, you kidding me? ” Rose held up two hands and mimed two rabbits going at it. “Twenty minutes, tops. And it’s a good thing there’s free healthcare in this country in case Rey makes Ben literally bust a nut.” 

Poe high-fived her, and the moment quickly devolved into panic when Poe had to give Finn a heimlich maneuver, because he’d doubled-over from laughing so hard. And after some negotiation, the remaining three of them had been gung-ho to explore the rest of the house. Except Rose seemed to have lost them at the room full of tacky ceremonial swords – or rather, they’d ditched her to go make out next to a painting of very ugly dogs. 

_Which is fine_ , Rose tells herself. The agreement was to meet up at the end anyway, no questions asked. _This is fine._ Rose moves on. Because she’s good at moving on.

This was the thing Rose loved about her friends. They were great at trying to outdo each other in their exuberance. Finn was at the table with them, and she’d chalk that one kiss they had on New Year’s Eve two years ago up to just that: exuberance. Things with them hadn’t been clear-cut after that, and they’d spent three months kind of… regularly staying over at each other’s houses. But she’d always been left with the feeling that he’d been holding out for something better, more defined. She didn’t hate him for it, and their closeness was such that she could never resent him. But the day that he showed up with a box of pastries from Maz’s and a sheepish smile, they’d both known whatever they had, had run its course. 

Half a year after that, Finn had met Poe at his architecture firm, and the rest had been history.

And that’s how Rose would always think of Finn: holding court easily with Ben and Rey – homecoming king, queen and court. The gang, lobbing insults and in-jokes like currency, luminescent and naturally charismatic in a way that Rose could never learn. These were the kind of couples people wrote stories about, the camera frame zoom-out at the end of the HBO mini series. And she’s the one off at the side, wishing them well. 

It’s not like she feels that she doesn’t belong. And they’re brilliant, of course. It’s just – between the imposter syndrome, and feeling like she needs to keep up with the pack, Rose hasn’t exactly given herself a ton of time since Paige to figure herself out. 

And a literal orgy isn’t the first thing that would have sprung to mind for the category of “fun” – things like bowling and hackathons are more Rose’s speed. But she _did_ want to try new things this year. 

Which is how she’s ended up standing in a hallway in the middle of Nowhereshire, England. Alone.

In reality, the mass of people copulating isn’t the problem. Because she isn’t a prude, and she is down for the cause. Sexual liberation is awesome. 

Rose just really hates how lonely this makes her feel.

At any rate, in this old house, there’d been a whole _house_ of outrageously ugly art to look at.

This is why after the warden had given them the ground rules and tour, Rose had found a door named “private” and slipped through in search of adventure.   
  


–-  
  


The moans and sounds of people copulating gets quieter the deeper she moves into the rooms. She’d turned left at the kitchens and then right at the corridor marked “East Wing”, and now finds herself padding down the hallway into an area marked “Arkanis”. 

The ambience in here is hushed, almost reverent. This place isn’t as old as she’d thought. One of the signs, which apparently only she in her group had bothered to read, had said Victorian at the entrance. It’s all walnut wooden panels and muted floral wallpaper – which is a contrast to the gaudy rooms she passed through earlier. A vase on a dias catches her attention: judging from the porcelain and the red detailing, 1850s? It tickles her inner art nerd (it started with Google Doodles and escalated to an art history minor at UC Davis), and she steps closer to take a look. 

There’s only one obstacle. Which is that there’s a couple there, stark naked, fucking against the dias. Judging from their moans, they’re having a great time, and one of them even seems to see her and not bat an eyelash, which makes her blush out of the sense of trespassing more than anything. And objectively, Rose knows they’re very good-looking. Both men are beautiful, covered in a sheen of sweat and moving in a rhythmic way that reminds her of Caravaggio sculptures that have come alive.

She’s also a little stressed out by how much the dias is shaking under their thrusting, though. 

But there isn’t much time to think about it – she hears footsteps coming down the hall, and her heart starts beating a thousand miles a minute, because she isn’t supposed to be here.

The couple don’t seem to notice. _Maybe they have a special pass to this part of the house?_ Rose decides not to stick around long enough to find out: she yanks open the door to the nearest room, and shuts the door behind her with a soft _click_. 

It isn’t until she’s inside, and turning around, that she realises she isn’t alone.  
  


––   
  


When her heart stops racing for a sec, Rose dimly registers that she’s arrived at what must be a library. The rest of the house is elegant in a detached way – the kind of place you’d find in a glossy magazine, with headlines about _tastefully (genteel) and (generic) contemporary restoration_. But here, there are signs that it’s a real home. Green filters through the leaves outside. Huge windows let in the bright afternoon light, illuminating stacks of books and curios scattered across the floor. Then there’s the carpet under her bare feet. Impossibly plush with an ivy pattern, and straightaway she wryly recalls that it’s the kind of high thread count she used the special shampoo on, back when she and Paige used to clean houses. 

Then, the shelves. Not vast like in the Disney movies, but narrow, dark and elegant. Stuffed full of rare editions of in embossed text that she’s itching to run her hands over. But also, there are Neil Gaiman and Lovecraft paperbacks jigsawed across the surfaces – whoever reads them clearly has a taste for escapism and the outlandish.

Rose takes in everything across the room, until she realises that there’s a man there. Sitting in a comfy-looking, old leather desk chair with his back to her. He’s slender, all wiry shapes and angles. Curled up in a way that doesn’t look super comfortable, but he seems okay with it. His socked feet are up on a side table and he’s wearing a huge pair of black headphones that the audiophile side of her brain registers as _really fucking expensive_ , while he’s nodding along to what must be music. The colour of his hair reminds her a little of Calcifer from Howl’s Moving Castle, and she realises that the pattern on his socks are like the little bombs from Minesweeper, back when she used public library PCs.

She wonders what the protocol is when you walk in on someone like this. 

Should she wave? Clear her throat?

She tries both. Nothing. He keeps nodding his head along – just a little – to the music. 

Now that she’s walked closer, she can see the stack of vinyls near him. Tame Impala, Kraftwerk, and an obscure sleeve with Kanji lettering.

Is this some kind of… listening experiential bonus round? The host had explained at the start of the quote-unquote “experience” that there were different pleasure rooms to suit every kind of taste. She’d walked through every conceivable combo of it: a fur room, a leather room, rubber, silicone, nipple clamps, buttplugs… enough to last a lifetime. 

It was all very well-run, but like a visitor in a museum, Rose just hadn’t felt like it was right to touch.

And yes maybe she did jot down a couple of brand names on her phone for later research. But nobody needed to know that. 

Anyway. Whatever the guy is doing, she wants in. She taps him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me,” she says. 

The man gives an undignified yelp. And then she screams, because he screamed first. Rose sees her life flashing before her eyes as he topples, slow-mo, backwards on the chair onto what could be a million different sharp and impractical objects in the room. 

“Watch out!” she yells, and it’s a burst of pure instinct as she grabs him to stop the fall. Then she’s staring, straight into a pair of surprised green eyes.

It takes her a second to realise that he’s balanced precariously on the hind legs of the chair, and she’s holding on to him awkwardly by the elbows. 

“Jesus fucking H. Christ,” he says.

They spring apart.

“Sorry! I was waving from across the room for like, five whole minutes. You didn’t see me, so I figured those must be the world’s best headphones, or maybe you have the world’s shittiest hearing.” 

Her voice sounds high and awkward.

The man looks down at the headphones like he’s seeing them for the first time. He looks back up at her, and he’s clearly confused about why she’s talking to him like he’s a Best Buy salesman when she just gave him the shock of his life.

He shoves the headphones unceremoniously onto the desk, and stands a little straighter.

“Are those the Sennheiser X-33s?” Rose says, at the same time that he asks, “are you lost?”

This close, she finally registers the full impression of his face, the angles of them making her think of that Egon Schiele exhibit she saw at the National with Rey once. Placidity in his expression that doesn’t mask his assessing expression. 

“Because,” Rose continues, “the fidelity on those is –” she makes a chef’s kiss sign.

The man is unmoved.

“This is a private wing.”

“Is it? Didn’t know that.” 

“Right. I suppose you thought the multiple ‘no entry’ signs up here were there as what, _a guideline_?”

Rose shrugs. “Everything’s a guideline until you...rattle the foundations a little.”

He shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and leans against a table. It’s an unseasonably warm spring, but he’s wearing a sweater. It’s not just closed-offness of his posture, but it’s the attitude, which reminds her of one of the doctorate students from her old programme who got their buzz from caffeine and trying to undermine her thesis.

She knows this type. It’s just a matter of defusing the bomb before it blows.

“You need to leave, please,” he says.

“Uh, why? You don’t get first dibs to the audio station just because you found it first.” 

He’s looking at her like she just parachuted into the room and started speaking Klingon.

“...Found it?”

“And anyway”, she says, stepping closer to the vinyls. “I’m not going back out there. There’s a couple really _going at it_ and this is the first real conversation I’ve had all day. Hey, is that Velvet Underground?” 

He ignores her question, and gestures at the door as if to say _after you._

It’s her turn to feign ignorance, so she pulls a copy of Grace Jones out of the crate. “Woah, is that _Bulletproof Heart_ ? Where’d they find this? Wasted on this party, if you ask me. Nobody’s paying attention.” She glances over at him, and his brows are knitted together as if to telegraph _what the fuck are you on._

But she barrels on, because if there’s one thing that Rose knows, it’s to run repeatedly at a wall until it fucking caves. “Besides. Have you seen the decor in this place? Clearly the decorating choices of a rich fucker with zero taste. This is some Eldritch Monster Antiques Roadshow BBC1 shit. Who lives like this, anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Ginger Man says, and crosses his arms. “Perhaps a tasteless rich fucker whose deadbeat father is hanging on the wall?”

She follows his eyeline, and turns to look at where he’s staring above the fireplace. There’s a picture there, huge, like one of the moving portraits she read about in her dog-eared copy of _The Philosophers’ Stone_. Except the man in the picture isn’t moving. He just looks really displeased, like Rose has just turned around and tried to explain the finer points of the Robin Hood Tax and he’s not a fan of her flat-vowels accent.

_Riiiight._

She turns back to him.

“Well I’m glad that your Dad’s in a picture, and not _literally_ hanging on the wall. I was worried you’d like, flayed him alive or something. What’s your name – does it start in Ramsay and end in Bolton?” 

He narrows his eyes at her. “You’re very strange.”

“And you’re very...ginger.”

He folds his arms again, which makes her feel like she should be folding hers too. So they’re both standing there, and there’s a moment of silence as they size each other up. It’s the most unnerving game of blink Rose has ever played, and she quickly realises she’s losing.

She gives in.

“Look. Here’s the deal. I came here with a bunch of friends, and it was supposed to be this whole thing where we’d come in and have a good time and it would be funny, because it’s an orgy, right? A joke. But apparently I’m the only one who got that memo, because everyone’s decided it’ll be more fun to do their own thing and like, hang out or fuck with other people. Which is fine, it’s just a little awkward being a fifth wheel, you know? I paid good money to be here so I’m not just gonna sit in the metaphorical gift shop and twiddle my thumbs.” 

“There’s no gift shop here.”

“Kinda besides the point?” she says, rifling through vinyls and yanking out a copy of _Tranquility Base Hotel_. “And I know Emmeline Pankhurst worked super hard for my emancipation and sexual freedom and all… but maybe I’m not especially crazy about the human centipede action going on outside. Is that a bad thing to say? Well, sue me.” 

“You must be American, with your proclivity to spring for legal recourse at the first possible opportunity.”

“What, the accent didn’t give me away?”

He picks up a copy of _Shigeru Umebayashi_ and pops it to the side, next to a tea tray with a half-empty cup and what Rose knows to be fancy custard creams on them. Probably Waitrose, judging from the Rich Dude Vibes she’s getting from her newly acquired friend right now. 

“And sexual emancipation was really more Friedan than Steinem.” He continues. “Third wave feminists have ultimately done more to undermine the original intent of suffrage than have furthered it. But sure.”

“...okay, weirdo. You’re super wrong. But whatever.” 

He shrugs, but he doesn’t seem especially offended. 

“Besides,” Rose continues, “You’ve got more than two layers of clothing on, and you seem more defensive about your vinyls than the fact that I just wandered in here... I’m guessing that this is… some weird routine for you. Plus you have a fancy-ass first edition of _Middlemarch_ in here that I really wanna read. Hey, can I hang here for a while?” Rose stops rambling for long enough to register the cooly neutral expression on his face. 

“You’ll barely even notice I’m here. Scout’s honour,” she adds. 

He quirks an eyebrow at her. “Believe me. Somehow, I think I’ll notice.”

She doesn’t know how to interpret that. But before she can think of a retort, Ginger Bolton crosses the room away from her towards an old-looking vault, a neat black box with burnished yellow lettering across it. He twiddles a series of knobs experimentally, testing the feel of it with an expert hand, before he reaches inside.

Rose thinks idly that this is the part in Agatha Christie novels where the East Asian help dies before it’s curtains up on the _real_ mystery. She resolves to spare her extended family the dishonour of reading via WhatsApp that she died in the library at an orgy, which she wasn’t even having sex at. 

A weird survival instinct kicks in. In the back of her mind she gets the absurd idea to reach for the letter opener that’s next to her on the desk. Every inch of her 5’1 body tenses as she raises the knife-like implement above her head in slow motion...

Ginger’s turned around.

“What the fuck?! _”_

He jumps, clutching onto a bottle of wine like a baby, and almost toppling backwards for the second time. Guilt compels Rose to drop her arms immediately. 

He stares at her like she’s gone Full Hitchcock. Which is probably right, since she was about two seconds away from jokingly stabbing him in the neck.

“Sorry, sorry. Practical joke. _Bad_ joke.” 

“Are you actually insane?”

“I watch too many horror movies.”

It takes him a second to recover. But the terrified expression in his face flattens into something more like amusement. 

“Fancy yourself a killer, do you?” he asks. 

“Overactive imagination.”

“That question was rhetorical.”

Rose idly wonders what this stranger’s been through that would make him so nonchalant about a lowkey murder attempt. 

“At any rate, kindly give your house host a warning before you’re about to stab them. And preferably do so from the front. Besides, this is a Chateau Tueur D’etoiles ‘65. The least you can do is treat it with a modicum of dignity.”

“Am I supposed to know what a Chateau blablablergh is?”

“...It’s expensive.”

“I figured that much.”

A moment passes between them. Then the tension of the moment deflates, replaced with something a little more tentative. 

Rose puts the letter opener carefully back on the desk. Since she’s in here hanging out with a rich dude and his McMansion, she figures it wouldn’t hurt to have a little fun. She makes a decision and strides closer to him.

“Well? Doesn’t your fancy study have a stash of secret fancy glasses?”

“Day drinking is a fine British tradition.”

He turns to a nearby bookshelf and yanks a book out in one smooth motion. The shelf rotates, and opens up to reveal a line of wine glasses.

“Woah.”

“See. Being a rich fucker does come with some benefits.”

Rose laughs. More genuinely, this time.

“Nice. I’m Rose, by the way.”

There’s a flash of something cautious in his gaze before his face settles back to its pinched expression.

“Armitage. But call me Hux.”

“Hey, man.” Rose says. 

“Hi.”

At the same moment, a tiny voice in her brain works out a sneaking feeling that she’s had since she walked in here. Wrapped inside the curiosity, and the adrenalin is a realisation which smacks her like a fishtail to the face. 

_The long-suffering indie boy situation, the lowkey neuroticism, his whole prickly self-protecting...thing._

_Uh, maybe this Hux guy is kinda hot._

She isn’t entirely sure what to do with that information, so she reaches for something more familiar instead.

“Well? What’re you waiting for, Hux? Pour.”


	2. Half-Full Glass of Wine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Hux are in the library, and learn a little more about each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to the amazing beta coven of [Kay](https://twitter.com/drkldykay), [Kalx58](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalx58), and [Lepak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lepak/pseuds/Lepak) for their help on this at various stages.
> 
> *Heads up* content warning as well that there are references to death from _“I never knew her. She was from France, originally."_ down to _“I’m sorry, too. What was she like?” Hux asks._ If you need any more specific content warnings beyond this and the tags, feel free to add in the comments or DM me on Twitter. And if I missed any tags on this chapter, please let me know too. Thanks for reading!

* * *

The wine makes a satisfying _slosh_ as it lands in Rose’s glass. They’re two drinks in, and have made the joint decision to sit on the floor. Hux has fished out a container of olives and ham from yet another hidden nook, and Rose is taking full advantage of this time to stuff her face full of delicious, delicious food. 

She puts her hands on her knees and watches Hux cut into a block of cheese with laser-like precision. Once he seems satisfied with the requisite slice size, he places a cut olive on top of the piece with a totally unnecessary, but very entertaining, flourish. 

Rose resists the urge to knock the tiny food tower out of his hands. She watches instead as he eats it in two bites, then leans back against a shelf to stare at a wall across the room. As if he could graft the paint on the wall into submission with the sheer force of his eyeballs. 

Which she supposes, given his status as master of the house, is kind of the case. 

“So your family’s like, old-money rich?” Rose blurts out.

“Not quite. Middle-of the road, really, by English standards.” 

Somehow, Rose knows this isn’t really true, but she guesses that is a quirk of the obscenely wealthy that she’ll never fully understand. 

“Well, this sounds like it’s going to be enthralling, so…” she makes a _go on_ gesture with her free hand.

“My family,” Hux continues, “have the distinct dishonour of being Scottish. We might pass for imitation gentry if you look far back enough. And my father – rest in _no_ peace, his Satan’s armpit of a soul – shipped me off to boarding school to expunge any trace of it from me.”

“Honestly? Sounds like he was pretty successful.”

Hux shrugs. “Was his life’s shame that I ended up at Harrow instead of Eton.”

“Well if it makes any difference, Hugs, it’s all Hogwarts to me.” Rose tips her glass to say _cheers_. She almost knocks a piece of cheese off the board in her efforts, but catches it just in time and tosses it up into her mouth. 

“Mmm. Cheddar?”

Hux reaches across to nudge the cheese board back on the pile of _New Statesmans_ they’d balanced it on. 

“It’s Cantal. And look, all I’m saying is: never underestimate the potential of truly pompous bluebloods in this country to look down their nose at new money.” 

“Says you, Mr. Private Library. What d’you have to cry about, anyway? You’re holed up here in your fancy mansion eating cheese that was around two Olympics ago.” 

Hux snorts as she scrambles up from the floor. 

“And hey, wasn’t I here to look at books?” Rose adds. She wipes her fingers on the hem of her sundress before she looks towards the shelf. Flicking her fingers across a row of spines, she pulls out a volume with yellowed pages. 

It’s an old habit that compels her to do what she does next; a ritual of hers and Paige’s, when they used to rifle through secondhand books on Otomok Street. 

She brings the book closer, and inhales. Memories come flooding back: She’s seven, and they’re sliding dog-eared comics back and forth on formica as they help mom and dad close up at the restaurant. She’s thirteen, and Paige sneaks Pocky into the library and they’re giggling while studying late. She’s twenty, and their apartment reeks of Walmart potpourri and rosewater – the pauper’s perfume for the studio that they share, right above the Adult Store; the only place they could afford, after their parents’ funerals. 

She’s gripped by a wave of emotion so sudden and strong that it almost suffocates. But she tempers it down as quickly as it appears. Flipping through the book’s pages so quickly that the paper almost cuts. 

Rose spares a glance at Hux. He swigs from his glass, lost in his own thoughts. If he’s at all confused about why she’s gone full Basset Hound on his bookshelf, he doesn’t show it. 

Rose blinks the moisture away from her eyes ( _is there a damn mist in here? Stupid gothic moors)_ and turns the book around to take a closer look. The images on the cover begin to swim into legible shapes. It’s a crimson volume, thick leather, with not that much paper inside. The embossed text reads _Huckson Compendium, 1750-1985_. 

Curiosity piqued, she flicks past what must be a family tree, catches flashes of words like _tradesmen_ and _debt collectors_ , and stops at a black and white photo. A red-moustached man in Victorian garb with a passing resemblance to Hux – mostly in the unimpressed set of his mouth – scowls out from the frame. The portrait’s taken in a photo studio with ornamental cherry blossom trees at the back. 

Rose thrusts the open book at Hux, putting a barrier between herself and her pinballing thoughts.

“Who’s this?”

“That? Is beloved Uncle Teddy,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Hm.” She has a feeling Teddy isn’t that beloved in Hux’s memory or retellings, but decides there are other veins worth pressing down on. “Huh. _Theodore Huckson_ _was a working class sailor..._ blablabla... _rose to the rank of colonial administrator...instrumental in the early days of negotiations with local natives...eventual magisterial enforcer in the port city’s strategic security forces.”_ Rose looks up. “These books are all about the Hucksons. Relatives of yours?”

Now it’s Hux’s turn to stand, and he crosses the room to close the few metres of distance between them. The bottle’s half-empty, and he deposits it on the ledge next to where she’s quite literally raiding his family history. 

“Huckson was once the family name, yes,” he says, sardonically. “Ever been to Hong Kong?” 

“Visited once. A grand aunt and uncle, who went there in the 70s and stayed.”

_They all left Vietnam at the same time as Ma and Pa on a boat, eight people to a room. They were always confused that I never spoke any of their languages. They, and my parents, knew a Vietnam that they can never really go home to. Even if they tried._

Rose makes a good show of poring over the book, and not looking at him.

“So why do you go by… Hux?”

He takes the book from her and thumbs idly through a couple of pages, not really looking at anything in particular. Only stopping to make an inscrutable _hm_ noise at the pictures that catch his eye. 

“That book is far too _generous_ in its language. A few generations ago,” he says, “my great-great grandfather had the foresight in Hong Kong to capture control of Whampoa dock. An altogether unpleasant affair, swindling and lying his way to respectability and throwing a couple of close friends under the bus. What was a bit of betrayal and turn-coating in the name of power?” 

Hux crosses his arms. Rose doesn’t need an explanation to know what the unassuming reference to Whampoa Dock means. At best, it puts Hux in pretty close proximity to an upper class of political elite – even if he’s mostly adjacent and a few generations removed from it. At worst, it obscures the deep level of imperial wealth his family’s acquired to line their coffers. 

The evidence of it is stamped all over the same skyscrapers her aunt and uncle used to marvel at, on a bus trip she remembers from long-ago. 

“That’s the problem with the slippery Huckson-Huxes. What space is there in their albums for a _frail, weak-willed boy, thought not entirely bereft of potential_?” he adds, voice taking on a more baritone lilt. As if the words are coming from far away, from down a long corridor of personal memories that Rose can’t see. 

Hux busies himself toying with a loose thread on his sweater. Then he seems to shake himself out of it.

“Either way, Uncle Teddy ingratiated himself with the right people. Which put him in the good stead of our beloved royal patron.”

And it’s surreal, Rose thinks. That countries and cities of an old empire stretch out beneath her hands. And that standing next to this gangly stranger puts her, in some way, one step closer to where it all happened; a piece in the puzzle that has led her…of all places, to today. Here. 

Call it fate, ill-conceived, or just a strange coincidence. Maybe. Rose isn’t naive enough to ascribe any special meaning or importance to this. The only thing she knows is to move forward, make the most of her own circumstances. 

So in this case, she might as well make the most of the fact that she’s hanging out in a rich white dude’s house, drinking very fuckin’ good wine.

_History’s funny like that. Right?_

What good has dwelling ever done for her, anyway? She just thumbs to the next page of the book instead. 

“You were talking about the Queen. I’m guessing Victoria, the one like, horny for Albert?” 

“Good knowledge.”

“I’m not as dumb as I look.”

“Never said you were. Anyway, as a reward, Uncle Teddy received a crest and a title. He never wanted to be the son of anyone. Huckson was a name associated with servitude and middling Lords. So what did my forebears do – they rebranded, of course.” 

Hux picks up an empty wine bottle and seems fascinated by it, tearing at the label until it’s nothing more than strips. Rose has half an impulse to stop him, but she can tell he needs to finish his story, and like this is some weird twilight confessional that’s probably been building in him for a long time. Because if there’s one thing Rose is good at, is being a good fuckin’ listener. 

She counts it as a small act of generosity – that she lets him keep going.

“And in the fine old British manner of any landed gentry,” he continues, wriggling his fingers like he’s about to reveal a shitty magic trick, “my subsequent forebears gambled it away. Guess who’s saddled with the debt and dirty work of financing our way out of this mess.” 

And Rose isn’t sure, exactly, how she’s supposed to react to this tale of woe. She doesn’t understand it, because how could she? They couldn’t come from more different backgrounds, the girl with the secondhand keds and the maladjusted boy with the stiff upper lip. But she sees how nervous he seems. The awkward way he’s slowly crossing his arms and folding into himself. So she does the only thing she knows how to do, which is to revel in the absurdity of it. Jump into the ring, pull the curtain back on the clown. 

“Oh no! Peak 1% problems.” Rose says, slapping Hux hard on the shoulder. 

To his credit, he sits there and takes it. 

When she pulls back her arm, she thinks he might be glowering at her, but she’s surprised when he peers down at her, almost curiously. He’s so close that she can count the individual auburn lashes on his eyes. There’s an awkward pause between them, before he snaps the book shut.

“For the record,” Hux continues, “my grandfather was the one who bankrupted this Trust. By the time the title came down to me, there wasn’t much left. So yes, perhaps we can give this malaise a name.” 

Hux palms the book back to Rose, and she slides the book back into the shelf where she found it. 

“Eh. Crying about being a coloniser sounds pretty _poor little rich boy_ to me.”

And Hux _smiles_ , then. “Again, your references belie your impeccable taste. But much like Regina Spektor, our heydays are bygone.” 

Rose turns around. “Do not say that about the Brooklyn indie queen.”

“Alright, alright. It’s just becoming increasingly fun to needle you.”

They continue busying themselves, almost elbow-to-elbow, rearranging books on the shelf in no discernible order – Rose thinks it should be by colour, but Hux seems to want to work by size, and it is becoming increasingly chaotic as they continue this silent duel. 

But now that she’s not preoccupied, Rose finds that her mental radar is picking up a whole bunch more stuff that she hadn’t really noticed about Hux before. One is that he has nice hands, and watching them work is weirdly meditative. Two is that he’s projected easygoing this entire time, and he’s been open about his family history. But she realises that she still doesn’t know that much about _him_. Three, is that when Hux is standing up, and this close – he’s taller than her. By like, a lot. And if she sat on his desk, she’d be level with his eyeline. And she could push that damn fringe out of his eyes, and lean in, and skim her lips on–

There’s a _skkkkrrrr_ record-scratching noise in her head as she puts it out of her mind. 

_Oof. Remember stranger danger? No bueno._

Abruptly, she beelines towards a tiny photo frame of what must be several generations of annoyed-looking Hucksons, to put some distance between her and Lord Carrothead. 

“Couldn’t you, like, I don’t know. Put this place up on AirBnB? What’s wrong with a little weekend, what do you call them over here. ‘Stag dos’?”

He stays where he is. And makes a face like she just shit on his carpet. Or his dignity. 

“No. If I stoop to the level of a stag do, I might as well be doing this. Besides, this money’s far better. All you get with the National Trust is red tape and a migraine.” 

Rose thinks this is patently untrue, given the number of girls-only weekends she’s spent traipsing across the countryside with Rey in the past few months, taking advantage of public parks of historical and geographical interest. But she doesn’t feel like arguing this with him and she has a feeling that cottage getaways with a nominal fee, situated in the remote highlands, are maybe not really Hux’s speed. His are more racking up billable expenses while wining and dining clients across luxurious European locales. 

Eager to put a stop to her curiosity, Rose picks up an ornamental globe from a nearby nook. Copper-flecked, it’s heavier than it looks. She very nearly drops it, and Hux raises his eyebrows, quizzical. 

“And the Daily Mail like, for sure don’t know about this? I feel like they’d have a field day,” Rose continues. 

“They certainly do. A few of them even grace us with their presence, on occasion.”

“What?! Dude, spill the beans.”

Hux taps his nose. “A gentleman never tells.” 

“Wo-ow. Rich people have the weirdest codes of honour.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Besides, I’d much rather know the patrons are fully debauched and paying for the privilege of doing so in privacy, rather than random day trippers traipsing into my house.”

Rose lobs the copper globe at him. “You have a really weird way of thinking about things, you know that, right?”

Hux catches it, surprisingly smoothly, before depositing it back on a window ledge. “I do.”

“That explains why you were cool with me crashing here, then.” 

“Quite the contrary. Your company is… rather refreshing.”

 _She Looks Like Fun_ spins on in the background, guitar disjointed and discordant. Rose holds his eye contact for a second too long, and suddenly she feels like she should be looking away. But she can’t.

“You _sure_ know how to flatter a woman.”

“Once in a while, I do try.”

Now it’s his turn to hold her gaze, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. And Rose wants so badly to lean in, to do something ridiculous like cross the room and jump on him, just to see what he’d do and whether he’d freak out or let it happen. Recklessness is coiled in her gut like a spring, and she wants to hit the damn buzzer. 

But Rose won’t, because impulsiveness is not a thing Rose does. Much less one night stands.

_Wait, what?_

A clock chimes nearby, and this time it’s her that jolts in surprise. Hux suppresses a smile, and pointedly clears his throat. Flustered, Rose tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and reaches for her half-empty glass.

“Anyway, so. More wine?!” 

Hux gives her a mock-salute. 

“Your wish is my command.”  
  


**–-**

  
Rose counts another half-hour chime as they’re getting increasingly slozzled. She’s done a proficient job prying some of the rare books out of Hux’s otherwise museum-quality bookshelf. Coffee table books sprawl out in a half-circle around them, as do two bottles of wine, an assortment of glasses, and one hip flask of the Scottish Highlands’ finest _Hosnian Prime_. After some back and forth, they’d agreed on the next vinyl: the lilting tones of Phoebe Bridgers give the room a honeyed quality. 

The carpet’s soft under Rose’s knees as she kneels there, hunched over a limited edition of Rosaline Ormiston’s _Turner Masterpieces._

It turns out Hux did a history of art module at Oxford, “because how else would I ingratiate myself with the other toffs,” he’d said. So Rose had gone on a full ten-minute soliloquy about the museums in London and their incredible value as a publicly accessible resource, especially when compared to New York City, when she used to have to pay for entry by scouring her savings, or take advantage of Uniqlo Tuesdays. Hux had even made an impressed noise and jotted notes in his iPhone when she’d told him about the Halal Guys cart. 

“I think it’s beautiful.” Rose says, tracing the impressionistic blue brushstrokes of a seaside painting.

“Don’t you find the depiction of it rudimentary? Though I admit his fascination with the natural world remains ahead of its time.”

“Duh, thank you, Mr. Mansplainer. Trust you to want to make everything about industry and machines.”

“I just think that if there’s a way to...improve upon the natural order of things, it’s incumbent on man to try.”

“A man versus industry spiel. Of course.” Rose pushes herself up to sit straighter. “Do you really still buy into that though? Something tells me you wanna believe in it a little more than you actually do.”

Hux doesn’t respond to that. Simply nods, a little rueful, and pulls open another book of Restoration religious murals. Stopping once in a while to chuckle at some of the more gauche rendering of Jesus. 

Rose tries to ignore him for a while and lose herself in the pages, but it’s getting more difficult to. There’s a current that runs between them now, and it feels like every time he brushes his hand through his hair, or gives a sigh, it sounds exceptionally loud in their corner of the room.

“I just want to understand this correctly,” she pipes up, desperately reaching for her failsafe of snarky humour; dry wit as her lifejacket. “Are you like one of those gentry guys from romance novels where you don’t have to work and your… peons just do it for you?”

“God, no.” Hux grins. “I do what all respectable landed gentry do in this great day and age. Siphon other people’s rich money off into untraceable Swiss and Cayman Island bank accounts.”

Rose lets out a long sigh. 

“People like you are why Wall Street got away with what they did.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

Rose turns to him, gluing him to the spot with her best stare. “So why do you do it?”

Hux toys with a nearby bottle opener, turning the corkscrew round and round.

“I don’t know what else I’d be doing, if I didn’t.”

She wonders if he’s talking about his job, or just… everything. Because she kind of understands what that’s like, too. To feel like she’s jumping from one dot to another, living her best impression of something that resembles life, since Paige died. And she doesn’t think she’s doing too badly. But life with Paige was the blueprint she’d clung so tightly to. It was supposed to be the two of them, together, against the odds, always. And now that Paige isn’t here, the lines Rose had etched so clearly in her mind, the trajectory that was supposed to include them both – it’s gone. 

And it doesn’t slip her notice that what Hux has said is the most self-pitying thing Rose has ever heard. But even in his hubris, she still has a flash of pity for him. There’s something compelling about this guy: so caught in the undertow of his own self-loathing that she has half an instinct to slap it out of him, and the other half just wants to be pulled under, to see how deep it goes. 

They’re sitting very close on the floor now, hands almost touching. Rose could reach a pinky finger over to cover his, but that feels way too intimate. Instead, she glances at the angled slope of his shoulder, and she finds she wants to rest her head there. She thinks he’s been paying attention, in his own weird way, too. He’d left the extra olives for her to finish earlier, hasn’t argued with any of her vinyl choices (except one heated debate about the merits of the _Yeah Yeah Yeahs_ ), and he hasn’t pushed her for any personal details beyond what she’s wanted to share. 

Rose tilts her face up towards him. He’s pasty as _hell_ , expression milklike as the dust motes dance around them in the afternoon light.

“Hux. Why are you being so nice to me? All I’ve done is drink your food, eat your wine, and like, insult you all afternoon. Shit, I mean. Eat your food and drink your wine.”

He shrugs. 

“Company is nice.” 

“And this is how you treat... company?” 

He’s so close, and she’s gazing up at him. It’s natural, the way their faces tilt towards each other’s. And it’s the low ticking of the old clock in the room, and the feel of her cotton dress scrunched under her fingers as she’s leaning in, so close she can count the lines on the collar of his sweater. The tip of his nose brushes against the sensitive spot near her ear, and...

“You’re kneeling on a first-edition copy of _Mansfield Park_.” Hux says, voice low. 

“Oh. Shit. Sorry.”

She scoots away, and Hux scrapes his hand along his jawline, as if he’s not sure what strange impulse possessed him either. 

The moment passes.

Wordlessly, they both scramble up. When Rose looks up at him, he’s offered her the crook of his elbow, in invitation. 

“Come on. I’d like to show you something.” Hux says.

Rose guesses the day can’t get any weirder. Might as well roll with it.  
  


\----

  
They stare at a painting of a corgi. It’s too fluffy at the edges, and its teeth look like little razor deathtraps. Rose tries her best not to laugh, but joy still bubbles out of her like water. It’s easier to tread in these shallows, with the safety of smalltalk and humour instead of whatever was happening with them earlier. 

“Damn. I was really hoping you’d lead me into a whole secret wing or something.”

“Sadly not. My great-grandfather bought this house and true to its era, the nook that they constructed was only impractical and stupid enough to be this small.”

“I’m not complaining. This is pretty neat.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“So you brought me here to look at this Reddit artfail?”

“I’ll have you know it’s very popular on Reddit artfails.”

Rose shrugs. “Of course it is.”

“But no. Check this out.” Hux continues. He steps closer to her, and puts a palm on shoulder to shift her around. He drops his hand, and Rose still feels the shadow presence of it there, the reassuring touch. 

“If you stand here, just here… you can look out onto the moor,” he adds.

“Here?”

“Just here.”

And there’s the briefest of seconds when Rose doesn’t really know what she’s staring at, exactly. It’s one of those stained-glass windows with latticework, a couple of different colours melted together like someone left play-doh in the sun for too long. She wants to say something, but clocks that Hux seems content to wait for an indefinite amount of time. So she does too.

“Are… we just gonna stand here… in awkward silence?”

“If you’d just stop talking for _one_ second…”

And that’s when it happens. Hux was onto something, because it takes a minute for the evening sun to hit the right slant, but suddenly, it’s magic: refractions from the glass light up the room, and for a minute, Rose feels like she’s buoyed – standing in the centre of a kaleidoscope.

Rose can’t help it. She gasps. 

“ _Goddammit_ , Kacey Musgraves was right.”

“What?”

Rose chuckles. “Nevermind. Just a song.” 

She turns to look at Hux, still hovering near her with his hands in those pockets. The sun catches the amber in his eyes, and with his hair lit up like that, he looks like a skinny emo Icarus.

She wishes she didn’t like it so much. 

“And where’d you get this fancy contemporary art thing from? Some like, overpriced dealer at Art Basel? Ooh, Monaco? Singapore.”

“eBay.” Hux deadpans.

“Seriously?”

“No. It’s from my mother.”

He’s quiet for a while. The kind of weighted silence that tells her that he wants to say something important, so she gives him the space.

“What happened to her?”

“I never knew her. She was from France, originally. Working here as a maid, looking after my father. He… well. I think we’ve established that he wasn’t a terribly nice person, but they had a sort of begrudging agreement, I suppose. She didn’t know she was pregnant for some time. My father only let her stick around long for me to be born before he decided he wanted to keep me for himself.” His voice is tinged with something dark and bitter, and his mouth is a hard slant. “One night, she ran away. I tried to find her, of course. Father laughed whenever I asked, and I got a letter when I turned eighteen, letting me know she’d died when I turned nine.”

Rose reaches out and puts a hand on his arm.

“Hux. Shit, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright. Father never otherwise spoke of it. It was so long ago. Nothing was ever hers in this place. But she had a knack for collecting old trinkets. I managed to recover some before the Estate cleared out her belongings. Including, apparently,” he waves one arm vaguely at the melted-candy window. “This well-intentioned but ultimately terrible interior decorating project.”

And Rose thinks to herself, how funny, and sad. That she recognises that same instinct from him to paper over trauma with a well-timed punchline. She thinks about the fate of two young women, both trying to make the best of their station in life; both returned to the earth, with others to carry on the work of living. 

Rose examines both their situations, and she isn’t sure which hurts more: having known someone, family, like she did for half her life and losing them? Or not knowing them at all, and wondering what could have been?

“Do you miss her?” she asks.

She tries to ignore how crestfallen he looks. How the grief shaves a couple of years off his face, softens the remoteness. 

Hux shrugs. “You can’t miss the people you never had.” 

Then there’s just the sound of trees rustling, as the rainbow turns on, around them.

“You’ve lost someone too. I can tell.” Hux says.

And maybe Rose decides that it’s time to stop hiding.

“Yeah. I did.” 

“What was their name?” 

“Paige. My sister. D’Qar Beach, two years ago.” Rose can feel the snot building up in her nose and it’s always ugly when she gets upset, but she doesn’t care. “She was out running. Dusk. A kid was in the ocean, obviously someone who wasn’t from there, or too young to listen to the no-lifeguard warning. She waded into a riptide to stop them from getting swept away. The problem when you do that, of course, is that you might end up in the undertow.”

Rose thinks she sees it, the pity in his eyes, the flickering horror of it dawning on his face when he realizes how things ended for Paige. And she wishes that it would be less painful, each time, when she thinks of it too. But she won’t ever forget. 

“I’m sorry, too. What was she like?” Hux asks.

How _would_ she describe what Paige was like? How do you construct a memorial in words to justice to the person that they were, when their life had been so full? Paige’s warmth, how she was adamant that they would put aside a portion of their savings for local food banks – the way she was always ready to give to someone else who needed it, even when she had nothing to give. The way Paige would sit at the dining table, rubbing the blisters on her feet after a third restaurant shift and tell Rose not to worry – that finishing calculus homework was more important than anything else. The way Paige said that pain was temporary, because there would be something better for them out there. The way they’d started duolingo Vietnamese together, and were on a 232 day streak, and now Rose can’t even look at the green owl without feeling sad anymore.

How can she put that into words? The sentiment lies mangled in Rose’s throat. Grief a barbed wire that she can’t unwind.

So Rose reaches into her own pocket, and shows him a picture on her phone. Grainy, like photos from 2009 were. In it, she and Paige are younger. Rose wears a band tee, Paige the 70s jumpsuit they’d thrifted one afternoon on Hays and Minor. Paige wraps her arms around Rose like she could protect them both from the world. 

Rose wonders why the world never protected Paige, in return. 

“She was always such a believer. In something bigger.”

“I can imagine. To carry hope, that takes a lot out of a person.”

“Yeah. I just...wish we had more time.”

He reaches out like he wants to put a comforting hand on her arm, but seems to think better of it. But Rose looks up at him, eyes searching his face. 

Maybe it’s because it’s easier to talk about grief with a relative stranger. Maybe it’s because it’s easier to participate in the exchange, to unearth the buried parts of herself when there isn’t this expectation to perform being okay and just fine, like Rose does when she’s with friends. It’s not like they don’t understand, or like they aren’t there. They’ve all lost people – it’s not like Rose has a monopoly on any of that. It’s just tiring, sometimes. The boundaries she has to keep up for herself, in the name of keeping on. 

In the silence, with this near total-stranger. A shared understanding claws its way to the surface. Her confession comes as effortlessly as breathing. 

“It’s lonely, isn’t it? Missing someone?” Rose asks.

“You get used to it.”

“Did you?”

The question hangs between them like a scythe. And that for all their posturing, and the _it’s okay I’m alright I’m good_ , there’s a colder, harder truth. That the missing doesn’t ever go away. That ghosts aren’t apparitions, so much as reaching for a hand in the dark, and you don’t ever find it. That continuing is learning to contend with the shadow puppet of grief, and honouring someone’s memory in the little ways you know how to do. Whether it’s a grainy old photo, or a pane of badly-melted glass. 

But the past is the past, and there’s no taking it back. In the space between the two of them, she feels the tendril of something, new and vulnerable. Hux’s eyes remind her of the grey before a storm, and he moves like he wants to say something, but she doesn’t let his mouth form the words. 

Rose decides she wants to discover. 

So despite the fact that they barely know each other, despite the too-warm air in the panelled room, despite a part of her brain yelling protectively to not do it because it’s stupid and poorly thought-out and totally irrational and maybe he doesn’t even want this _what the fuck are you doing_ – it still feels like the most natural thing in the world, when they kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter probably needs some proper footnotes, the main one being that Hong Kong was a major British colonial port until 1997, and it was very common for white imperialists to seize control of key trade sectors – many to which they retain the rights and control of today. [Hutchison-Whampoa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutchison_Whampoa) is a prime example. 
> 
> Many [Vietnamese refugees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_people_in_Hong_Kong) did arrive in Hong Kong during the Vietnam war, and some stayed, and some went back to VN eventually. 
> 
> But yes, if there are any references that don't make sense or need more explanation, shout and I will happily share!
> 
> Anyway, what will happen in the next chapter of "meetcutes that would be way weirder in real life"? find out soon. (I hope to get the final chapter up within the next few weeks and your comments would be brain fuel, so thanking ye.)

**Author's Note:**

> (☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞
> 
> More to come, subscribe if you want updates!!
> 
> Kudos, comments, gentle concrit welcome~
> 
> Yell things at me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/bobaheadshark)!


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